Tuesday 19 August 2014 - Telstra today launched its global cloud-based unified communications service, enabling businesses to communicate and collaborate in real-time regardless of their location around the world.

Nathan Bell, Telstra Global Enterprise and Services, Director of Marketing, Portfolio and Pricing, said Telstra's global solution, launched in Australia last year in partnership with Cisco, is now available across four continents in 25 countries, consistently delivered over Telstra's worldwide network extending to more than 2,000 Points of Presence (PoP).

"Our new global service is a significant development in global collaboration capabilities and has been designed specifically for today's dynamic workplace where employees use the web, video and voice to drive innovation and improve productivity," said Bell.  

"With Telstra Cloud Collaboration, businesses can roll-out extensive collaboration and communications tools to staff throughout the world, scale user profiles and functionality up and down depending on business requirements and ensure employees working remotely have identical resources to those working in the office - all while minimising traditionally significant upfront investment models."

Mr Bell said the service would be delivered via Telstra's cloud infrastructure, which now extends to seven locations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

"Telstra Cloud Collaboration allows global customers to focus on their core business priorities whilst benefiting from a services model managed by Telstra, without the need for on-premise systems. 

"It is also a globally consistent platform ensuring that standardisation and collaboration are made that much easier for customers seeking to empower their teams, regardless of the location of their offices or data," he said.

"Cisco is excited to offer Telstra tools and capabilities for delivering rich collaboration experiences," said Thomas Wyatt, Vice President & General Manager of Cisco's Collaboration Infrastructure Technology Group.

"Telstra is one of Cisco's key global partners and we are happy to join Telstra in offering one of the most comprehensive portfolios of cloud-based services in the world to be delivered on a Cisco Unified Computing platform," he said.

Telstra's service will be available from the end of August to customers on a monthly, "per worker" basis. Worker types are unique to Telstra and have been specifically designed to meet the different needs of employees, categorising them as ‘essential', ‘office', ‘information' or ‘mobile' workers, making deployments simple and easily scalable.

Today's announcement builds on the ongoing cloud partnership between Telstra and Cisco. In March, Cisco announced that it will build the world's largest global Intercloud together with Telstra and other partners to address customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the robust demands of the Internet of Everything.